


She Wears Trouble Like a Crown

by Blue_Savannah



Category: Curse Workers Series - Holly Black, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-13 10:30:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16016051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Savannah/pseuds/Blue_Savannah
Summary: AU set in the Curse Workers' world, and in which Rey is an assassin.-------“You want me to kill Governor Solo?” Rey asks Luke, feigning casualty, but she’s already feeling overwhelmed at the thought of all that security she’s going to have to get through. Important politicians and celebrities often hand-pick workers for their protection teams, so that’s something to think through too.“No. If I wanted him dead, I’d have Tim on the job.” Luke doesn’t look at Rey when he talks. Instead, he’s staring out those huge glass windows, his eyes fixed on the treetops of Central Park, contemplating the world outside of his control. It’s October now, early fall, and a thin layer of frost dusts the Great Lawn, like a smattering of haphazard tinsel. Dusk is settling, and even perched on a down-stuffed sofa underneath an absurdly expensive chandelier, the night seems dark and ominous.Heavy, and weighted. Full of things that make you want to look over your shoulder.Rey bites down on her thumb, cracking the nail between her teeth. A bead of blood wells up across the skin of her cuticle. “So, whatdoyou want?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm taking a quick break from my current story to write this one - which has been bouncing around in my head for MONTHS.

When Rey is thirteen years old and spending time at her third foster home in six months, she wakes up one night on top of the building’s roof, with no memory of ever having climbed up there.

This is not the first time she’s woken up in a strange place. Last week, it was in the hallway; a few days before that, she’d woken up shivering in the bathtub, only to realize that she’d turned on the faucet while fully asleep. The freezing cold water, pooling around her ankles and soaking into the fabric of her pajamas, had snapped her back to reality.

But this _is_ the first time she’s woken up and almost died. 

Rey opens her eyes to an empty, ice-edged road swimming sickeningly far below her. Stunned, her bare feet skid across snow guards, her scream echoing a hundred feet up, no one awake to hear it. She falls before finding any kind of footing, catching the impact on both of her shins. Clinging to the roofing by her fingertips, she hauls herself back on top of the ledge, ripping off three fingernails in the process, her body screaming with the effort of pulling herself up. 

Blood halos her fingers. Beneath her, the tiling is slick and raw; overhead, the sky is tar-black and endless, strewn with icy pinpricks.

She’s googled somnambulism, and WebMD says that sleepwalking really isn’t that big of a deal. Technically, it’s a behavioral disorder, estimated to affect between 1-15% of the population, and usually unaffiliated with any psychological problems. 

_Usually._

But Rey’s not thinking medically. With science, you begin with what you know, and attempt, systematically, to prove it false. Science categorizes things into neat little boxes of right and wrong; science provides a logical structure to the chaos of the world. But this … there is no logic, no order of any kind to _this_. 

The politically correct term is _curse work_. 

A curse worker is someone who possesses the hyperbathygammic gene, resulting in unusually high gamma waves, and consequently, extraordinary powers. 

About one in every thousand people carries the gene. Of this number, over 60% are luck workers, those who can impart good fortune at weddings and baby showers, and alternately curse with minor inconveniences like flat tires and perpetually spilled coffee and overlooked promotions at work. The second most common are physical workers — those with the power to both tear apart and heal the human body — followed by memory workers, dream workers and emotion workers. Death workers are obscenely rare, and there hasn’t been a transformation worker in living memory. 

Rey’s hand flies instinctively to the empty space around her neck, where a protective amulet used to hang, back before all her possessions were stripped upon arrival at the foster home. That was around the same time Devi had snarled _you’ll be sorry_ after she beat him up for stealing four-year old Teedo’s stuffed rabbit. Devi’s had it in for her ever since she got here. How easy would it have been for him to curse her, to slip off one of his gloves and press his bare finger to her skin while she was sleeping? If she’s been cursed by a dream worker, it would explain all the recent sleepwalking escapades.

Besides the hyperbathygammic gene, all curse work takes is skin to skin contact, which is why glove-wearing has been legally mandated since before Rey can remember. (The mantra, _a bare hand is more dangerous than a loaded gun_ , has been drilled into her from infancy). 

A hundred and fifty years ago, when bodies were washing up in the river and Anakin Skywalker had wormed his way into becoming President of the Free World through a combination of emotion work and bribery, wreaking havoc on a global scale — the government took action, imposing a ban on curse working.

Of course, this only drove the illegal activity underground and resulted in the rise of crime families who began actively recruiting any workers they could get their hands on.

Far from fixing anything, the ban was mostly responsible for creating organized crime.

\-------

Supposedly there is a new test that conservative politicians would like to make mandatory, one that measures gamma waves and correspondingly determines the presence of the hyperbathygammic gene in young children. In theory, compulsory testing will keep kids from accidentally breaking the law when they discover their powers for the first time. In theory, the results are supposed to stay private ... but no one actually believes this to be the case.

Rey doesn’t need a test to tell her who she is. She has always known what she can do, and consequently, possesses the good sense not to tell anyone about it.

\-------

When Rey is twenty years old and a sophomore at Kansas University, she walks out of her _Intro to Russian Lit_ class just like she does every Tuesday afternoon — only to find Unkar Plutt leaning against a red brick column and smirking under an unlit cigarette. At first she walks right by him — because she is not the kind of girl guys wait for outside of class, with her thickly braided brown hair, her muddy hazel eyes, and her perpetual loneliness, derived mostly because of all the black, dark things she’s swallowed down — but then Unkar says, “Hey Kenobi, walk with me a sec.”

She does. She’s flattered, because Unkar’s handsome in a sneering sort of way. He wears his good looks loosely, like the genetically blessed tend to do, his stubble bordering on too scruffy, his hair unbrushed, but still not enough to disguise the handsomeness. 

He places one gloved hand on her elbow, steering her out of the building and into the snowy courtyard. His gloves are such a bright emerald green, they make his eyes look dull in comparison. 

“What’s up?” Rey asks. 

Unkar twists to look at her. His hot eyes _rake_ her body, lingering too long in the wrong places, everything he wants from her written right there in his face. Rey sucks in a harsh breath. She’s such an idiot, for thinking for a split second, that he might actually want to get to know her. 

Fellow students scurry across the courtyard, heads bowed against the snow flurries. Blue sunlight refracts across the ice. Unkar leans in close, his breath a muted whisper, “I know what you are. You’re hyperbathygammic.” His teeth snap rabidly around the word _hyperbathygammic_ , transforming it into something filthy.

Rey scuffs a booted toe through a sheet of ice, edging a crack through all that crystal. She should deny Unkar’s accusation, but she’s blindsided, too shaken for composure. This is _not_ what she’d expected. “What do you want from me?”

His smile is a leer. “You,” he says, “I want you.” He traces a lazy gloved finger across the bare skin of her collar bone, just under her purple printed scarf, “and as long as you do what I say, I won’t tell anyone your dirty little secret.”

Even while revulsion is rising up in her throat like bile, Rey has had years of practice looking people in the eyes and lying. Masking her disgust with a sharp, bright smile, she says sweetly, “Honestly, you didn’t have to resort to blackmail. I would have come with you willingly.”

It is only half a lie — sure, Unkar’s handsome, but Rey knows to look for monsters in the daytime as well as in the nighttime, and something about him has always filled her with a vague sense of disquiet. Last month, her roommate Connix had stumbled home around 8AM following the Sigma Chi formal, her hair mussed in the back, one dress strap torn, red, raised scratches blooming around her neckline — with no memory of what had happened to her. Rey suspected a memory worker — she’d never known who — and now she thinks, irrationally, _maybe it was Unkar?_

Her words are worth it, if only because she gets to see the surprise expand behind his eyes. His mouth curves into a lurid, lush grin. “ _Well_. Good to know we’re on the same page.”

Rey smiles guilelessly back at him, with no intention of ever letting him touch her.

\-------

She gets her revenge that same night, not even bothering to go through a death worker. When Unkar invites her over to his dorm room, she goes willingly, the knife hidden in her boot like a solid reassurance. He strips her down, starting with her blouse and working his way downwards, but as he reaches for her boots, she’s whip crack fast, fingers seeking out the hilt of her weapon.

In the space of time that it takes for him to blink, Rey sinks the knife into the hollow of his throat. Unkar’s mouth parts, blood bubbling all over his lips. He bends his neck grotesquely, looking at the hilt in his throat with something that borders on condescension, as if he believes that the tiny knife, with its decorative handle, is too small to kill him.

It’s not.

\-------

The six big crime families came into power around the turn of the nineteenth century, and it’s remained that way ever since. They control all the crime — from the small things like the cheap (and sometimes fake) charms, to bigger things, like assault and murder done for those who can afford to pay.

There are six big crime families — but Rey has only ever been interested in working for the Skywalkers.

She is twenty four years old when she moves to New York City, when she gets down on her knees, takes a knife to the collarbone and pledges herself to the country’s oldest and most infamous crime family. The ash stings like fire when they pack it into the open wound to stem the bleeding, her flesh red and throbbing and angry for days afterward. At the time, she tells herself not to cry, nearly bites her tongue off with the effort of withholding tears, but they come anyway, streaming unchecked from the corners of her eyes to drip wildly from her chin. 

This ritual is supposed to represent the death of her previous life, and the entrance into a new one, but for Rey — it represents freedom. Paradoxically, her service to a crime family means that she no longer has to live in fear. Now, she is protected, among her own kind, part of a real family.

Gradually, the wound fades into a necklace of keloid scars, just above her collarbone. (Sometimes, she fingers the rough, ridged edges of it when she's lying in bed and wonders if any man could ever love her like this, then immediately chastises herself for behaving like a stupid little girl).

When she’s not busy offing people for Luke Skywalker, Rey spends some time freelancing at a PR firm in midtown. Done at Leia’s urging, it is a flimsy, less-than-commendable stab at normalcy. For starters, she has to wear shirts that button all the way up to her neck to hide the neck scars. She buys a pair of Manolo Blahniks on clearance and remembers to accessorize, but the receptionist at the front desk still looks at her like she’s something scraped off a subway platform. 

Her first day on the job, HR asks her to submit an icebreaker questionnaire, which is promptly emailed to the whole office. Rey briefly considers lying, but surprises herself by answering truthfully. She names Led Zeppelin’s _Going to California_ , Dire Straits’ _Sultans of Swing_ and The Cult’s _Love Removal Machine_ among her favorite songs and _The Great Gatsby_ as her favorite novel. Within minutes, she receives an email, the subject line marked merely as _You_.

It is from somebody named Kylo Ren. When Rey clicks on it, the body of the email only says, _You have impeccable taste in music_. Heart hammering strangely, it takes Rey ten minutes to compose a suitably nonchalant response: _thanks - glad to know there’s still some love for classic rock’s golden boys_. She tells herself that her suddenly piqued interest is because she didn’t expect to make any friends at work, and not because a quick google search of the name “Kylo Ren” yields minimal results.

HR introduces her to a flurry of women around the office, all of whom appear to be wearing variations on a uniform of black dresses and layered gold necklaces. Rey is conspicuous in her skinny jeans and high collar. She looks around for anyone called Kylo Ren but the only males she’s met so far are named Poe and Finn, and Poe is wearing a button down that somehow still reveals plenty of chest hair, a multi-colored ascot and the vaguest approximation of eyeliner. 

_Oh well_ , Rey thinks, shrugging, wondering why she was even interested in the first place.

\-------

Armitage Hux is staring at her over the rim of his vodka-laced cocktail, his eyes glassy bright and happy, his sandy red hair tumbling in waves across his forehead.

They are sitting together at the bar of _The 13th Step_ , in the Lower East Side, so named because of AA's 12 step program to sobriety. A cluster of giggling co-eds and frat boys playing beer pong abandon their current game to order another round of Bud Lites, their laughter breaking into Rey's conversation. She shifts her feet, allowing a girl in a bustier and a nose piercing to sidle by her. Underneath her, the floor is sticky with layers of dried beer and sweat.

“Where did you grow up?” Hux asks, his gloved hand hot on her lower back, and Rey hates how _earnest_ he is, how quickly he melted under her smile and her quiet, _hello, is this seat taken?_ She wishes he’d put up more of a fight. 

“California,” she lies quietly. “The Bay area.”

He laughs lightly, his hand slipping up from her back to trace the light ribbon of muscle running from her shoulder into her forearm. “I believe it,” he says, “You look like a Cali girl, all tan and muscled. Did you play sports in high school?”

Rey is slow to force the smile, pausing to take a long sip of gin instead. She doesn’t want to tell him that the muscles came at the behest of early gym mornings, when she punished her body with a grueling diet of weights and violent acts, taking every precaution she could to protect herself in the event that she wouldn’t be able to touch someone with her bare hands. Underneath the gloves, her fingers twitch, antsy.

“Do you want to get out of here?” 

Hux closes his tab in record timing. Outside the bar, he leans into her, partly drunk, partly lustful, while they wait for the uber. When he kisses her, he tastes sugary sour with leftover vodka, his tongue wet and eager in her mouth. Rey closes her eyes. He is her age but seems so much younger. _I don’t want to hurt you_ , she thinks desolately, _you should run away from me while you still can._

But he doesn’t. Of course he doesn't. “You’re so pretty,” he announces to all of 2nd Avenue, “I’m so lucky.”

Rey hates herself.

En route back to his apartment, Rey traces a crack in the car window and surveys Lower Manhattan from atop the Brooklyn Bridge, hazy under a layer of starlight and smog. Yesterday afternoon, Luke had told her to dispose of Hux quietly. While Hux wasn’t a threat, his worker father dealt in death exclusively for a rival crime family. This same crime family had murdered one of Luke’s employees last week.

Rey knows that Luke believes in sending messages, but sometimes she wishes she didn’t always have to be the messenger. _You wanted this_ , she has to remind herself, while Hux nestles at her side, his fingers threaded through hers, _you chose to work for the Skywalkers_.

Hux’s apartment is surprisingly massive, spanning almost the entire second floor of a building somewhere off Atlantic Avenue. In the corner of the living room, a musty keyboard collects dust, while the console under the TV glows blue, and the collection of video games under the sofa hint at recent play.

“Let me get you some water before bed,” Rey says, while Hux grins beautifically, and captures her mouth in another searing kiss. She laces the drink with cyanide. His gloved fingers brush hers when she relinquishes the glass over to him and watches while he drinks it.

Hux dies ashen faced, still seated on the sofa, still smiling at her, and something in Rey’s chest breaks a little. 

She cries the whole way home.

\-------

The next day at work, she is pitching Mountain Dew’s new limited-edition Baja Blast flavor to editors at BroBible and Food Network, when some man comes stomping into the office, trailing dirt across the carpeted floors. He is wearing heavy boots, loose fitting jeans and a navy blue T-shirt with a logo she doesn’t recognize on the back. Rey can only see the back of his head, just his long, loosely curling dark hair that barely brushes the edges of his shoulders — but something about him still sucks all the air out of the room.

 _(You don’t get involved in curse work without developing an instinct for things that can hurt you)._

An editor from Esquire emails about a Mountain Dew price point on an outdated product. Frowning, Rey is working on a response when the back of her neck prickles. Spinning around, she locks gazes with the blackest eyes she’s ever seen. 

The man she doesn’t know is talking to another girl wearing pearl drop earrings and a navy blazer — _Maz, she recalls her name_ — but he’s staring at Rey, not Maz, the heat of his gaze as visceral as touch, like bare fingertips on her cheeks. 

Their eyes lock across three rows of desks. Awareness _sizzles_ like a brand between them. When Rey first started working for the Skywalkers, they’d had an emotion worker press his bare fingertips under her chin, just above the fresh cut in her neck. She remembers the dizzying sensation of loyalty that had pulsed through her, the back of her throat burning like she’d downed a shot too fast, the feelings of devotion pulsating through her whole body, even in the backs of her goddamn kneecaps. This feeling isn’t loyalty, but it’s just as strong and strange.

Color floods her face. _Shit_ , Rey thinks, desperately returning to her email. _This is inconvenient._ Her hands are shaking. 

She’s not surprised when someone next to her calls, “Hey Kylo, can you come here a sec and look over this proposal for me?” and he comes stomping over obligingly.

She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t dare.

\-------

He’s still staring at her during the office staff meeting a week later, when she stands up in front of everybody and smiles, while seven rows of chairs applaud stiffly, bored.

(Only _he’s_ not bored. He’s not clapping either. He’s looking at her like he wants to inhale her, like maybe he already has, and he knows how she tastes).

“Why don’t you tell us something about yourself, Rey?” he calls out, leaning backwards in his chair. He’s too big for it, all long legs and big, thick chest. He must work out. Or … _something_. Rey can’t stop staring at the spread of his shoulders, straining at the material of that thin T-shirt. Her pulse rattles in her ears, slow and dull and throbbing. 

She heard from Rose Tico, another girl in the consumer division, that he’s the executive creative director of the office. She’s heard that he’s brilliant from everyone else. Maz told her that he was the mastermind responsible for brainstorming Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” back when he worked at Edelman. _Honestly the fact that a man came up with that ad concept_ , Maz had said, visibly awed, _the fact that a man tapped into the need to encourage women to be confident and to be themselves is truly astounding. Kylo has a unique understanding of the female psyche._

 _A unique understanding of the naked female body, more like_ , Rey thinks now, skewered under Kylo’s burning eyes. Squaring her shoulders, she mentally reminds herself of the way she has clawed herself up in this world, and refuses to be intimidated by him.

“Well,” she says, taking a deep breath, “I know that there are twelve pairs of ribs that make up the thoracic cage, and ten are attached to the sternum, and two are floating. The first seven pairs are true ribs; the last five are false. The best place to stab someone is up under the fifth rib, because of its close proximity to the heart.”

The noise in the room plummets down to nothingness, fifty pairs of eyes staring at her in sheer disbelief.

“Oh my god. Kidding!” Rey says, her voice pitched an octave higher than normal, her cheeks aching with the biggest smile her face can manage. “I’m totally kidding. What do you think I am, some kind of psychopath? No, um, this should tell you that _Law and Order_ is my favorite TV show. And also _CSI_ and _Bones_ and _Dexter_ , if we’re being honest. I’m a sucker for crime shows.”

Relieved murmuring breaks out. 

The amused expression on Kylo’s face sharpens, knifelike, into something like curiosity.

\-------

Rey spends most of her time at work nervous around Kylo — for reasons she doesn’t understand and can’t explain — and all that anxious energy drives her to take on extra jobs for Luke Skywalker. This is why, one Tuesday night, she happens to be tailing a memory worker who swindled Luke’s friend out of a few thousand dollars down at Atlantic City — when the guy catches her totally unaware and backhands her out of nowhere. He’s tall and thick, built like a brick wall; there’s plenty of _muscle_ behind the hit, and Rey goes flying, striking the cement with her ass and neck simultaneously, which doesn’t seem like it should be possible, but there you go.

She sucks in a deep breath, trying to trick her lungs into believing they still work. Lights spin at the corners of her vision. She rolls and somersaults to her feet, but the guy is faster, clocking her so hard that black bursts in her vision cloud everything. She heaves him over her shoulders, and goes spinning along with him, head over heels. She’s face down on the asphalt, gravel grinding into her cheekbones, gasping, when her fingers find the handle of her gun. 

They say that New York is the city that never sleeps, but her gunshots are frighteningly loud in the stillness, and Rey wonders if anyone is awake to hear. 

She remembers that night back in Kansas, in the foster home, when she slept walked onto the roof and woke up to a black sky and a grid of icy white stars. The world had been so absolutely still, it felt like she’d already stepped off the roof into oblivion, like maybe the earth was flat after all, and she’d dropped off the edge of it and was falling, falling, _falling_ … and finally, the noise in her head was quiet.

\-------

The next morning, a livid, blue bruise is swelling on the far side of her cheekbone, the rise of it still visible even under a thick layer of concealer. Rey wears her hair down to work, the shiny swing of it mostly obscuring her face, and she stays successfully unnoticed in her desk corner, bent over a media strategy for the better part of three hours.

At lunch time, she buys a tomato soup from Hale & Hearty, burns her mouth on the first too-hot spoonful, and reflexively spits out a few drops, which slide down the lace collar of her blouse. She scrubs out the stain standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Her reflection is wearing those few tomato droplets proudly, like a badge of honor, like pinpricks of blood.

The ladies bathroom is situated exactly halfway in the middle of the back hallway, a long, cool corridor full of silver floor tiling and splintered, refracted light. Rey walks down past one of the conference rooms, turns sharply at the receptionist’s desk, and comes face to face with Kylo Ren, who’s sucking on a mint and staring at her with hot eyes. 

The air snaps. Rey ducks her head _fast_ , her hair swinging like a shield between her face and the rest of the world, her pulse thudding in her palms with vivid awareness.

“Rey,” Kylo says. The altoid crunches between his teeth.

She keeps her head down. “Yes?”

“You have …” His lip twists between his front teeth in sudden consternation. 

She won’t look up. She exhales, coming to a halt in front of him.

“What is it?”

His fingers reach out, past the shiny curtain of hair, to graze the swell of the bruise, now purpling like old fruit. She can tell the exact moment he touches it. His whole hand goes rigid, latent strength stiffening his gloved fingertips, and at his touch, desire tears through her like a stormfront, wild and unpredictable. She wants to tear the gloves off his hands and press her bare fingertips to his, to feel the rampant weight of skin on skin, power sizzling between them like an electric surge. _Dangerous_.

“Did someone hurt you?” he asks, and the depth in his voice tells her that he too, carries darkness with him, enough at least that his mind jumps to terrible conclusions at the mere sight of bruises. 

“Rey,” he grinds out, and his voice catches. “Talk to me. If I need to hurt someone on your behalf, I fucking _will_.”

The worst part is that she _believes_ him, so much so that she cannot look at him. She has never had someone offer to go to battle for her. The opposite in fact — her whole life has been a catalogue of self-preservation, of learning how to kill, lest she be killed first.

Infuriatingly, Kylo is so much her type that it leaves her speechless. The dark expression in his eyes, the way his hair falls, the sheer breadth and width of him — not that he’s a huge person physically, but somehow he manages to suck the air out of every room he walks into — all of it conspires to bring her to her knees. Rey swallows hard, trying not to let the _thing_ burn its way out of her chest. 

Beyond the sheer inappropriateness of feeling this kind of way for her work superior, Kylo could never want her anyway. Not if he knew what she really is. She thinks of Armitage Hux’s eyes going glassy, of the way Unkar Plutt’s hands scrabbled desperately at the dagger in his throat. _Who could ever love her?_

“Rey?”

“I tripped. I’m very clumsy,” she explains, with a half toss of her head that both of them know isn’t real, but why, _why_ does he look at her like this, his gaze ping ponging between that bruise and the high collar she always wears, like he can see the tell-tale keloid scars burning underneath. 

“Is that what really happened?” He steps closer, moving into her space, an intensity edging into his expression, like he can see every thought she’s ever had, and Rey can’t — won’t — let him; she worries that if he touches her again, she’ll never be able to rip this thorny thing out of her chest, to bury it, _kill_ it —

“I have to get back to work,” she answers abruptly, and makes herself walk away.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey was one month shy of fifteen when she made her first friend at the local high school, a girl named Tallie, who dyed the ends of her hair bubblegum pink and wore Aztec-printed T-shirts that made her think fondly of Arizona, where she’d been born.

Rey was being tormented in Trig — which was nothing unusual; she’d learnt to just keep her head down, even though her ears burned with all the snickers and the foul names her classmates shot at her — until Tallie had whipped around in her seat, pink hair bouncing, and snapped, “Don’t you fuckers have anything better to do? Geez. Pick on somebody your own size.”

Rey looked up cautiously, returning Tallie’s watery smile. The irony was, Tallie was all of five feet two inches tall, but she wore platform shoes that vaunted her to normal height and had a way of holding herself that made you forget how short she really was. Tallie and Rey both existed on the fringes of high school hierarchy. They’d never ever be _those girls_ — the kind that sucked seductively on lollipops and pranced around in Daisy Dukes, flipping long, luxurious blonde hair — but the difference between them was that Rey cared and Tallie didn’t.

“Can you even tell me why you do care?” Tallie used to sniff when Rey would lean against her locker and watch football players make out with cheerleaders, “We’re originals and they’re just carbon copies of each other.”

That was the basis of their friendship, Rey always wishing, always wanting the impossible things she couldn’t have, and Tallie always reminding her that it was far better to have a brain than blonde extensions. Until Tallie fell in love, anyway, and all that juvenile wisdom went out the window.

He was a transfer to their school, from Chicago. His name was DJ and he had messy, dark hair, just above a bird tattoo that coiled around the back of his neck and a spiked piercing in the top of his ear, a violation through the tender cartilage there. Rey wasn’t with Tallie the first time her friend spotted DJ, but Tallie told her the whole story later, and in great detail: how she’d seen him and been so overcome that she’d dropped her _Study of Living Organisms_ textbook, how DJ’s fingers had brushed hers when he’d bent down to hand her the book, how he’d smiled a crooked grin and said, “Biology, huh? Science is my favorite subject.”

From that moment Tallie was gone, so utterly love struck that she spent whole class periods doodling “DJ” in her notebooks. She signed up for AP Biology, merely because he was in the class, never mind that Tallie hated science. She took to wandering the hallways a few feet behind him, studying the way his dark hair spiraled around the tattoo and shouldered aside the girls that hung outside classrooms in throngs, giggling whenever DJ emerged, tousle-haired, and full of a lazy, latent energy.

Rey thought it was just an infatuation, a passing crush — but then, of all the worst things in the world to happen ...Tallie _worked_ DJ.

\-------

On Thursday morning, Kylo Ren passes by Rey’s desk and she doesn’t look up because she’s sure he’s only walking by her on his way to talk to someone else, but then he raps his knuckles gently on the wood in front of her, like a gentle admonition.

She looks up, the _wanting_ pulsing dully in her like the echoes of a distant drumline. She’s spent her whole life wanting things: normalcy, a family, belonging, someone to look at her like they loved her … and of course, _real_ love, the kind that isn’t worked or faked, but that is hands reaching out to hers in the dark, and a smile that promises to hold onto all her secrets, to swallow them down.

She should have learned by now — wanting things can only lead to disappointment. So maybe she’s just a stupid girl who’s never really been able to kill off the hope she carries inside of her. (Hope is like the meth of emotions in that way; it hooks you fast, from the very first hit, and even when you swear you’re not addicted to the way it makes you feel, you still _are_ ).

“Yes?” She lowers her eyes, because the way he looks at her makes her feel like he can see through her shirt.

“Next week, we’re pitching a new business opportunity,” Kylo tells her, “It’s for a sports streaming client, called DAZN.”

“That’s great,” Rey keeps her voice even and her hands steady on the keyboard, “Sounds like an awesome opportunity.”

“Yeah, well I want you to be a part of the pitching team.”

A beat. In a high school science class, Rey learned that an octopus has three hearts, nine brains and blue blood. Two of the hearts work exclusively to move blood beyond the animal’s gills, while the third keeps the circulation flowing for the organs. When octopi swim — their organ heart stops beating, which explains why they prefer to crawl; swimming exhausts them.

A pulse of exhaustion throbs behind her eyes. Rey massages her chest and wishes for a second heart, if only to help manage the emotional load of the first. “I don’t really have any sports experience. I’ve only ever worked on food and lifestyle clients before.”

“So? The only way you ever get any experience in life is to do the thing you don’t have experience doing.”

Rey swallows. He is so close to her, his eyes looking like dark bruises in his face. The bruise on her own cheekbone has faded to a dull greenish yellow by now, but she still sees his eyes skitter away from the spot, his jaw tightening subtly. 

“OK,” she concedes ungracefully, only because she doesn’t know what else to say. “So I guess I should brush up on my knowledge of the sports streaming space, huh?” When she skids backwards, the legs of the chair catch on something — the hem of a sweater she’s draped behind her — and the chair moves sickeningly off the ground for a full millisecond, until Kylo rights its trajectory with his foot.

“You don’t have to brush up on anything,” his voice is very low, “You just have to show up and be you.”

“Thanks,” Rey tells him, no breath left in her voice. _I wish you could see me with a knife in my hand_ , she thinks irrationally, stupidly, trying to convey the thought with her eyes alone, _I wish you could see me when my blood’s singing, and adrenaline is transforming my body into a wild thing, and I’m chasing someone down, because I’m never as alive as when I feel I might die. I wish you didn’t have to see this version of me … the clumsy one, who sits in front of a computer screen and types out mundane, stupid things, and can barely string two sentences together when you talk to me. I wish you could see the real me._

She thinks she imagines the way he bends, ever so slightly, when he stalks by her, like she’s the sun and he’s a plant that’s been starved for light all winter long.

\-------

“We love each other,” Tallie had explained to Rey back then, when they were both fifteen, and DJ had transitioned from ignoring Tallie in classes to hanging onto her every word at the lunch table. “DJ’s coming over tonight and we’re making popcorn and watching _The Notebook_. Most guys don’t really like romance movies, but it’s one of my favorites, and DJ actually said, ‘we’ll do whatever makes you happy babe.’ Isn’t that just the absolute sweetest thing you’ve ever heard?”

They were en route to history class, already five minutes late, but taking the stairs at a leisurely pace to draw out their conversation. The hallways were quiet and their footsteps echoed against the scuffed tiling. When Tallie beamed at her, Rey eyed her best friend suspiciously. Tallie might be a little strange, with her quirky earring choices, her tribal wear and her tie-dyed hair, but she was still infinitely more normal than Rey, the foster kid freak who slunk around places because she knew better than to make eye contact. Rey had hoped that being with Tallie would, through some power of alchemy, catapult her into a normal girl with normal problems — but now she wondered whether Tallie was really normal at all. Or whether she was more like Rey than Rey had ever suspected.

Voicing her fear aloud was difficult, but still necessary, almost like a bloodletting. “You didn’t … do anything to DJ, did you?”

“ _Do_?” Tallie’s green eyes narrowed to slits. “Do what?”

Rey hesitated, unwilling to make Tallie mad. “It’s just, last week he was obsessed with Christie Eckstrom, and I heard he was going to ask her out to winter formal. And then yesterday he’d totally forgotten about Christie and came to sit at our lunch table, where he made heart eyes at you the entire time. He’s never sat with us before. So why now? Did you do something you shouldn’t have done?”

“Like what, Rey?” Tallie snarled, all feral animal and raised, ridged fur. 

A drop of water pelted near her left foot, forcing Rey’s eyes upwards. The ceiling just above the third floor consistently leaked, and no amount of plumbing repairs had ever been enough to fix it. A tiny section was perpetually damp, darkening circular spots hinting at a timeline of mold. Rey edged backwards, well out of the way of wayward drops. “You didn’t … I don’t know Tallie. Don’t make me say it. Are you an emotion worker?”

The resounding slap of flesh on flesh was loud against the steadily plunking water. Rey’s face burned crimson with Tallie’s handprint; her eyes stung with unshed tears. It was easy enough to ignore vague hatred when it come from expected sources; it was harder when it came from people you thought were supposed to be your friends. 

Fury whipped through Tallie’s face like a storm. “You bitch.” Her voice was full of a quiet, awful venom. “Just because no boy will ever look at _you_ and think you’re worth anything, just because people say you don’t even _look_ like a girl, with your stupid, baggy clothes, doesn’t mean you have to discredit my relationship. Jesus fucking Christ. Sometimes I don’t even know why I bother with you. Do you have any idea what people say about you? They say that you’re a worker. A death worker, someone who can kill with one single barehanded touch.” Her voice rose in one single, strident stretch, saving the worst insult for last. “You’re a _freak_. You’ll never be normal.”

Something dark spiraled up inside of Rey at her friend’s words. For the first time, she considered how close Tallie’s bare skin was, and the urge to touch almost overwhelmed her. Because Rey _could_. She could pull her gloves taut, enough so that the threads barely covered her fingertips, and she could reach out, and change everything and the urge to do it swelled inside of her — a great, ugly blackness growing bigger than her hurt heart and her twisting stomach. It would be _so_ easy. One quick touch, and Tallie wouldn’t be Tallie anymore. 

But then, Rey’s hand fell. 

When Tallie walked away, Rey didn’t try to stop her. She didn’t want to want to walk into Mr. Rose’s class behind her and see twenty five pairs of eyes follow her, didn’t want to hear twenty five vicious voices quietly snicker under their breaths. Instead, she folded her legs and sank to the floor, swallowing down the hot ball of pain in her throat, trying to tease out some logic from the twisted mass of her feelings. 

Every single curse was known to backfire upon its user. _Every single curse works the worker_ , is what people liked to say. For instance, if a memory worker took away too many of other people’s memories, then blowback would eat away at his own too. Every time a death worker killed, the curse killed some physical part of his/her body too. And emotion work would always make an emotion worker unstable, even at the best of times. 

Rey stared at the water dripping in front of her feet until her eyes blurred. She refused to feel sorry for herself.

\-------

“Here,” Luke Skywalker tells Rey, pushing a frosted glass her way. “Have something to drink.”

Rey puts both hands around the drink, watching as her fingers leave handprints against the condensation. It is raining outside, the black sky spewing slants of grey water, and Rey is shivering from her walk over here, her hair plastered to the back of her neck. Next to Luke, Leia is dressed all in black, except for a slash of red lipstick bright enough to drown out the rest of her. She smiles, all mouth. 

Their penthouse, high above 5th Avenue, is beautiful. It’s cavernous, curtains thrust open from massive windows to display the expanse of Central Park sixty floors down below. On a good day you can see the trees and winding paths choked with bikers and runners; today, it is only black, shadowy shapes backlit by the sweeping threads of water. On the leather divan, next to a bowl of freshly cut hydrangeas, one of Luke’s bodyguards throws his coat over a chair, allowing Rey to count the guns strapped underneath his arms and across his back. He has more guns than hands and feet, not that they are any match against a strong curse. But then most of Luke’s bodyguards are curse workers. The tricky thing is trying to remember who can perform which curses. Luke likes to keep their powers a secret whenever he can, instilling an atmosphere of fear among his employees. 

Rey takes a long gulp of whiskey. “What can I do for you, boss?”

Luke eyes her, his gaze measured and appraising, not unlike the way Kylo looks at her. “You’re not going to like it.”

Steeling herself, Rey throws back the rest of the alcohol. Her throat burns. “This involves working someone, doesn’t it?” Usually, Luke respects her decision to use knives instead of her bare hands, only because she’s good with weapons. _Usually_. 

Leia rests her hand lightly on Luke’s arm. “Are you even sure she’s a worker? I’ve never seen Rey do anything out of the ordinary.” Her eyes glitter in challenge, as black as the rest of her, and Rey regards her solemnly. No one really knows what Leia can do, _if_ she can do anything, but Rey has always suspected she might be a dream worker. There’s no basis for this, only the way her eyes appear shadowed, as if perpetually fatigued. Rey bites back a shudder, thinking of all the nightmares a woman like Leia must have.

“I _am_ a worker. I just choose not to do it unless I have to.”

“And yet, you volunteered yourself to come work for us. We didn’t have to seek you out.” Luke leans forward in his chair. “Do you know who Koschey the Deathless is?”

Rey gives a stiff shake of her head _no_ , wondering if she’s being tested. Leia grins, the red of her mouth looking more like blood then ever.

“In Russian folklore, Koschey is a sorcerer who can become a whirlwind and destroy his enemies. He hides away his soul in a duck’s egg so he can’t be killed. Don’t cross me Rey. I am not the kind of man you want as your enemy.”

Rey isn’t sure what Koschey has to do with anything, but she knows a threat when she hears one. “I understand.” Next to Luke, a silver framed picture catches the light and twists, directing Rey’s attention to a scowling, black eyed boy. 

“Who’s that?” she asks, pointing, the words bursting from her before she can bite them back. At her question, something … fractures in Leia’s face, some kind of hidden hope shattering in plain view, and even Luke’s face isn’t impassive. The raw pain in both of their expressions is private, something Rey shouldn’t be privy to. She instantly regrets asking.

“That’s … his name is Ben. But we didn’t call you here to talk about Ben.”

“I’m sorry. So what _did_ you want?”

\-------

Some curse work wears off, after a time. Not transformation work, because anything that has been turned into something _other_ will remain that way until the transformation worker decides to switch it back, and not death work, because the dead stay dead.

But sometimes memories return, and emotion goes back to its original state, although the person who was worked will never really ever be the same again. 

In the spring of their sophomore year of high school, DJ abruptly broke up with Tallie and went to the headmistress, babbling about curses, yelling loudly to anyone who’d listen to him that he’d spent the entire winter “under a spell.”

Rey didn’t feel bad for Tallie. Not when she came across her former friend sobbing in the girl’s bathroom, her eyes red-rimmed and glassy, not when DJ started going out with Christie Eckstrom one week later and she passed them holding hands in the hallway and sucking face in the locker bay.

Not even when the government officials arrived at their local high school, obvious bulges in their uniforms revealing where they kept their guns. Not even when they dragged Tallie away, her red mouth contorted into a perfect O of screaming, her wail audible even from the lacrosse fields. 

Rey would’ve helped Tallie, if she’d asked.

But she hadn’t asked.


	3. Chapter 3

When a death worker kills, there’s no blood. The body only goes pale, the lips turning blue, as the entire nervous system shuts down in seconds. 

For every million people in the world, there are maybe ten death workers born. _Maybe._ Rey has only ever known one, a guy named Tim, who also works for Skywalker. Blowback has rotted away his molars, each kill killing a physical part of him, so that now he smiles around a mouthful of gold teeth. He’s addicted to nicotine, and chases away the taste of smoke with gum, so often found with a wad of spearmint clamped between his teeth that everyone has taken to calling him Chewy. 

All workers are wary around each other, but Rey’s relationship with Tim bypasses caution and hovers deep inside _fear_ territory. Once, she’d run into him in Skywalker’s apartment, hauling something around in a burlap bag that was exactly the size and shape of a human body. Sweat had stiffened his black hair into weird, tufted peaks. Red dirt streaked his cheekbones and smeared along the floorboards. 

Rey had pointed out the mess. “Leia will kill you if you get dirt on the rugs.”

Tim had grinned, all that gold glinting in his mouth. His smile was wild and savage, muted slightly against a swollen bottom lip and bruised chin. In the soft glow of apartment lighting, his eyes were sharp and grey, like muddy water. “ _Kill_ is an ironic word to throw around in this context, isn’t it?”

Logically, Rey knows that “good” workers do exist. There are dream workers that make amulets to protect against trauma-induced nightmares and nighttime PTSD, and there are luck workers who help their friends land job interviews and christen babies at baptism. 

But Rey has spent too much time around workers like Tim and the Skywalkers and so she sometimes forgets that what she can do has the capacity for good.

\-------

On Wednesday, Rey is walking from her work desk to the kitchen for her third cup of tea that morning when she spots Kylo Ren in the hallway. They both stop. Rose, from the consumer division, sidles by, gazing unhappily at the both of them, and Poe is standing outside of the IT room, complaining loudly about the malware issues on his laptop, but in that moment, no one else exists to Rey outside of Kylo.

She stops and so does he. Noise and motion blur away. It feels like a camera circling them, like in a movie, where everything turns panoramic, and the screen switches perspectives: him, looking at her, her, looking at him. For a second when they walk past each other, their arms brush, their covered fingers accidentally curling against each other, then slipping free, like a secret, private handshake.

\-------

Workers have always been deeply mistrusted. While Anakin Skywalker may have been the catalyst for the governmental ban against workers in the U.S., hatred and fear of the hyperbathygammic gene has always simmered along the bloodied veins of history. (Today, historians are mostly aligned on the fact that Hitler, Cleopatra and Stalin had all been emotion workers, and just _look_ at the scale of damage they'd been able to cause).

In the state of New York, Governor Solo is harnessing that ancient fear to his advantage — by pushing to pass proposition two, a new piece of legislation that mandates all citizens submit themselves for hyperbathygammic testing. As much as he swears the information will remain confidential, everyone knows it won’t. Under proposition two, workers will be refused jobs, denied housing and basic human rights, openly discriminated against … and the worst part is that if the proposition passes in New York, other states will begin adopting similar legislature. 

The vote is next Tuesday, and Governor Solo is the job that Luke hands Rey.

\-------

Of Governor Solo — Rey only knows what everyone else knows: that he and Leia Skywalker used to date. 

It’s not a secret. Old pictures of the two of them are still splashed across magazines and newspapers, and once or twice Rey’s gotten an ache behind her eyes, seeing the way the two of them had looked at each other. Even in black and white print, Han Solo’s face had been open, adoring — and while no one would ever call Leia’s face _soft_ , it had lost some of its sharp edges, becoming almost sweet. It was amazing what love could do to people, how it could rip down barriers and make the impossible feel like it was within grasp.

As a Skywalker, and especially as Anakin’s daughter, the media inherently mistrusted Leia — but she and Luke had been building up a positive reputation almost since infancy. Brick by brick, they’d steadily constructed a facade of public service. Now, they were considered to be pillars of the community, with only a few people realizing what they really did to make their money. 

Han Solo, then an aspiring politician, and Leia’s relationship had blown up like some sort of media supernova. Everything they’d done had elicited attention. There’d been almost two years stuffed full of galas and glittering dresses and clicking cameras. There’d been a child, a baby boy, of whom _People_ Magazine had bought the rights to the first photos. A month later, Han whisked Leia away to Italy for a romantic getaway, and fell down on one knee somewhere on the banks of Lake Como, proffering up a diamond ring the size of a robin’s egg.

Leia said _yes_ , but then two weeks later, Han was spotted storming out of their penthouse on the Upper East Side. A paparazzi pushed a microphone his way, screaming questions in his face and Han punched him. _That_ had been all over the newspapers: a slow-mo, close up image of Han’s fist making contact with the reporter’s jaw, a smear of blood visible just below his nose. 

Leia started showing up alone to events, her eyes shuttered, face closed down, and Han began spewing vitriol in front of politically-branded podiums where he gave speeches about the evil nature of workers, and — 

Well. It wasn’t hard to guess what might have happened.

\-------

“You want me to kill Governor Solo?” Rey asks Luke, feigning casualty, but she’s already feeling overwhelmed at the thought of all that security she’s going to have to get through. Important politicians and celebrities often hand-pick workers for their protection teams, so that’s something to think through too.

“No. If I wanted him dead, I’d have Tim on the job.” Luke doesn’t look at Rey when he talks. Instead, he’s staring out those huge glass windows, his eyes fixed on the treetops of Central Park, contemplating the world outside of his control. It’s October now, early fall, and a thin layer of frost dusts the Great Lawn, like a smattering of haphazard tinsel. Dusk is settling, and even perched on a down-stuffed sofa underneath an absurdly expensive chandelier, the night seems dark and ominous. _Heavy_ , and weighted. Full of things that make you want to look over your shoulder. 

Rey bites down on her thumb, cracking the nail between her teeth. A bead of blood wells up across the skin of her cuticle. “So what do you want?”

When Rey was growing up, kids at school whispered that Luke Skywalker was the bogeyman. Hushed murmurings of his last name trailed behind loose swirls of fear, like ripples in water. His blood connection to Anakin Skywalker meant that the world hated him on principal, before he’d ever known who he’d wanted to become. 

Rey isn’t a kid anymore. Since she’s been in Skywalker’s employ, she’s killed eighteen men. She is highly trained in Krav Maga and Taekwondo, she knows the most efficient places on the human body to stab someone with a dagger (depending if you want lots of blood or very little), and she’s begun building up an immunity to the more commonly used poisons. And yet, sometimes that vestigial childhood terror stirs up in the pit of her stomach, forcing her to grapple with her demons as she stands motionless under Luke’s glacial voice and waits for his judgment to fall on her.

Luke says, “No, I don’t want you to kill Solo. I want you to _become_ him.”

\-------

Rey stands in front of the bathroom mirror and calmly regards her reflection: hazel eyes, thick, brown hair twisted back in a hasty topknot, freckles dusting the apples of her cheeks. She blinks, and the girl in the mirror blinks back at her. 

Then she closes her eyes and pictures Governor Solo as she’s seen him on TV: salt-and-pepper hair, muscular build, long hair, shirt worn loosely, open to the collarbone. He’s still handsome, even if his face has worn the ravages of time, just as Leia’s has too. Rey’s left hand jerks. Her limbs thrash wildly as she begins to change. Her body rises upwards, face elongating, limbs thickening, waist widening, hair shortening. When she looks back in the mirror, she’s not Rey anymore.

As soon as it hits, the blowback drives her to the floor. Her chest constricts painfully, squeezing the breath from her lungs. She tries to get back up to her feet, but her legs have buckled beneath her, one of them covered in ridges of black hair. When she attempts a scream, her voice emerges with the shrill whistle of a tea kettle. Her skin cracks _open_ , the inside of her right kneecap covered in scales. _It’s OK. It’s only blowback_. She closes her eyes, trying to calm her erratic heartbeat, but still there’s the nascent horror that this time, something has gone horribly wrong. 

She’d been five years old the first time she’d ever transformed herself. Her mother had just breathed out her last, slow rattling breath, courtesy of the cancer that had metastasized into her brain, and at first, sobbing into the bedcovers, Rey had thought that the grief was somehow _shrinking her_. The world narrowed, her vision darkening.

“Help me!” She’d shrieked, but only a guttural yowl escaped through her mouth, a deeply tortured, animalistic sound. Her bones popped and twisted. That first time, terrified and alone, Rey had thought the blowback was killing her. She hadn’t known how to change herself back, so she’d spent a month in that animal form, padding around as a tabby cat, attending her mother’s funeral curled up on a patch of pine straw, tail coiled between her legs. She didn’t know how to catch food. She’d been _hungry_ , the black, endless pit of it gnawing away at her insides and driving her to scrounge for scraps in the garbage bins behind restaurants. She’d managed to transform herself back into human form one rainy night in April, and afterwards, half naked and shivering violently, she’d crawled into the bushes of some neighbor’s yard and sobbed herself to sleep.

\-------

In all the world over, there is no one else quite _like_ her.

Every century or so, one new transformation worker is born into the world. Just one — and sometimes not even that one.

\-------

When he talks, Governor Solo has a tendency to be over-expressive. 

Rey suspects it’s a nervous tic. On TV, she’s watched him jerk his head and wave his hands in the air during speeches — and when she is standing up there at the podium, her heart tearing out a rapid-fire, machine gun pitter patter of beats, swallowing hard and wearing someone else’s skin, this is the stupid idiosyncrasy that she holds onto.

_*waves hands*_

She reads the speech that Luke has written out for her, ultimately denouncing proposition two, word for word. To be clear though — Luke didn’t actually write it. One of the dream workers that sometimes supplies the family with deep, soundless sleep is a copywriter for Amazon, and Luke had hovered over his shoulder like some kind of malevolent shadow, watching, while the worker had rearranged Luke’s melange of angry thoughts into language appropriate for a political convention. 

It has taken more than half of the workers under Luke’s employ to orchestrate this con. First, there’d been the emotion workers who’d lulled both Solo and his team into a false sense of security. Then, once everyone’s defenses had been down — the physical worker, who’d knocked Solo out with a mere brush of his finger and stuffed him somewhere where no one would think to look for a body. The memory worker would come afterwards: someone to plant a false memory in Solo’s mind, making him think that he really had delivered this speech. 

Rey is the figurehead, the pièce de résistance, the crown atop the con. There is a reason people both prize and fear transformation workers above all else — not only because of their rarity, but because of the infinite possibilities that they offer. 

Rey can, quite literally, steal someone else’s entire life. She can walk into someone else’s house, eat their food, kiss their husband, raise their children, and with no one even aware of it. She can turn into a blackbird, a cat, a dog. 

She can do the worst things imaginable, leaving behind no clues to link her to any of the crimes.

\-------

On Tuesday afternoon at work, everyone in the office stops what they’re doing to watch the vote around proposition two. 

Amilyn Holdo, Managing Director of the NY office, has ordered pastries and teas, but they sit untouched on the tabletop, sugary glazes crusted and hardening in the cool air. Rey picks a chair a little ways away from the crush of people, and sits with her head propped up against her fists, the memories of what it felt like to be Han Solo assaulting her consciousness. Herself again, she stares at the purple veins threading through her wrists, at the bruise on the back of her hand from where the blowback had sent her falling to the ground, mid-transformation. She’s overcome with the sensation that she herself isn’t a real person. Sometimes transformation work does that to her — and the trauma is slow to leave, the sensation of wearing someone else’s skin lingering in dreams even for a long time after she starts to feel normal again. That’s just one of the many reasons why she prefers to use weapons instead of her bare hands. 

“Is this seat taken?”

Kylo’s face is very close to her. The blush melts across her face. “No.”

His smile is faint and bright, like starlight at dusk. The edges of it look almost … tender. “How have you been?”

“Great,” Rey manages. “Just fine.”

When he moves to sit down, his gloved hand brushes the bare skin of her shoulder — unintentional or not — and her blood does that thing where it starts slamming in her body, making her think she’s contracted some sort of rare disease. “And what do you think of all _this_?” At the word _this_ , he gestures back at the TV, to where one of the CNN anchors is talking about this historic vote that may change the course of workers’ lives forever. 

Rey dips her head, wondering how Kylo would react if he knew her part in all of this. She doesn’t believe her sins are redeemable, doesn’t think that anyone can every really care for her — which is part of why she wanted to work for the Skywalkers. If she is so unloveable, so destined to be different, then the best she can do is to be among her own kind, no matter how full of horrors they are. In Rey’s head, her mother is dying and Tallie is calling her _bitch_ and Leia is saying _I’ve never seen her do anything extraordinary_ and all of it plays out in an endless loop, forever reminding Rey of how alone she really is. But Kylo threatens to break the pattern, especially when he looks at her like this. Like he wants to _devour_ her, like he wants to kiss her — actually maybe like he already _has_ , and he knows what she tastes like and wants more —

Rey clears her throat. “I think,” she says carefully, “that workers are dangerous.”

Kylo blinks. “Well yes, but that’s kind of a no brainer. They can’t help the way they’re born. Why should they be punished for powers they didn’t ask for in the first place?”

Rey glances around. The two of them are sitting in chairs a few feet away from the throngs of people fixated on the screens, the buzz of TV volume drowning out their muted conversation, but she’s still careful to not give anything away. 

“I don’t think they necessarily need to be punished,” she tells him, “but they should be monitored. They need to be kept in line.”

It’s bullshit. Kylo thinks so too apparently, because his eyes sharpen and his voice sinks deeper in his throat. Smokier. Hungrier. “You don’t actually think that, do you?”

Rey opens her mouth to respond, but in that same second, someone happens to be walking behind her, and accidentally bumps into the back of the chair. The resulting impact sends Rey lurching forward. Reactively, Kylo jolts forward to catch her. The shirt Rey is wearing is buttoned up to the very top button — as is her habit — but the material is loose fitting and it gapes as she falls, and Kylo is just above her, and he sees the flash of skin. He sees the keloid scars, the rough, raised ridges of skin that had formed after the Skywalkers had cut into her collarbone and packed the wound with ash to stem the bleeding. Rey _sees_ Kylo see them. His eyes are pure, obsidian black, the pupils blown wide with shock, swallowing up the irises. He sucks in a messy lungful of air.

Rey’s blood is a wildfire. Her body feels full of something heavy and thick, an ache that bypasses her bones and cuts straight to the heart. She manages to right herself in the chair without Kylo’s help, but his hands stay outstretched in the air towards her a beat too long.

“I’m —” she licks her lips, panicked, _frantic_ , “I’m not — that’s not — I can explain —”

Luke has a protocol put in place for situations like this. There are a litany of lies Rey is supposed to recite, should anyone ever see her scars, but right now she can’t remember any of them. The flush on her cheeks is so obvious that she wants to cover her face with her hands. 

She’ll have to leave this job now. Maybe Luke will get a memory worker to make Kylo forget what he saw, but the thought causes Rey an almost physical jolt of pain, that Kylo should ever be made to forget anything about her.

But then Kylo does the strangest thing. He looks straight into her eyes, his own as pitch black as tar and endless as the night sky. His body angles towards her, his expression intense. _He_ … everything about him is intense, like pure magnetism distilled into human form. “I will never tell,” he whispers, his words sharp as glass splinters, soft as feather strips, “not if you don’t want me to.”

She looks away, intending to be nonchalant, even though her heart is still practicing its war drum dance. She pretends to be engrossed in the news playing out across five different TV screens. But she knows that the equilibrium between the two of them has irrevocably shifted, and that they are no longer on even ground. The scales have tipped, and they are falling _falling_ — maybe away from each other, maybe towards each other …

She doesn’t know which. Not yet, anyway.

\-------

After giving the speech and smiling Governor Solo’s smile, Rey had dodged the microphones and the multitude of press conferences and gotten into the town car that Luke had procured for her. She’d entered Luke’s penthouse suite still wearing Han Solo’s face, intending to take a long hot shower and crawl into his guest bed, but she never made it that far. 

Leia, standing in front of those enormous glass windows, turned. She was wearing dark wash, low-rise jeans, expensive looking, and a hoodie with faded lettering on the side. A stack of silvered bangles slid up and down her wrist, jangling softly. Rey was used to seeing scorn and hauteur in her eyes, but what she saw now was far worse. It stopped her in her tracks and dried up the spit in her throat. 

Because Leia’s eyes, when they looked at her, were suddenly soft and warm, transfigured by joy. _“Han,”_ she exhaled in childlike wonder, everything that was hard and ancient about her face melting away. Her shining expression was heartbreakingly vulnerable. “You came back to me.”

Her feet were light across the wood floors. She reached out with trembling hands and rested both of her palms on Rey’s face — Rey’s face that she thought really was _Han’s_. Her smile was unbearably hopeful. Her touch was so gentle, her fingertips shaking slightly, like she held something precious in her hands. 

And Rey couldn’t stand it.

“I’m not Han,” she told Leia, remorse crackling through her. She clenched her fists, peeled off her gloved hands and changed, and in a second, she was no longer wearing Han’s skin, but back in her own. 

Leia’s face went from light to dark in a second, like someone flipping a switch. Her hands fell to her sides. She didn’t offer to help, only stepped away when the blowback hit Rey with the force of a wrecking ball. She gasped and thrashed as waves of pain convulsed her body. She fell to her knees, her vision splintering into shards as she looked up at Leia through hundreds of eyes. Her arms were coils of rope, knotting together. Bones snapped. There was a wet thunking sound, like something damp being dragged a wood floor, accompanied by a horrible gurgling noise. _Was it her?_

Rey came back to herself what felt like hours later. Outside the windows, the weather had shifted, a silver haze of misty smog drifting across the glass. “I’m sorry,” she told Leia, relieved to find that she could still speak. 

Leia’s eyes were hooded. She carried herself loosely, an almost sway at the hips. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone —” She didn’t finish her threat. She didn’t have to. There were a myriad of ways in which the Skywalker mob princess could have Rey killed.

“Never,” Rey shook her head. “I’d never tell anyone.”

Leia exhaled, pain splashed all over her face. Most of the time, Leia alternated between impassive or jeering expressions, but when she let her guard down … _oh_. There was so much pain there, infinite reserves of it, and she took it up in both hands and wielded the ragged, razor edges of it like a samurai sword. Rey had lost her mother, and spent most of her life feeling so abandoned that a life of assassination looked appealing — she’d thought she’d known what pain was. But when she looked at Leia’s face now, she saw how much _deeper_ her pain ran, how there were textures and colors and dimensions to it. You could spend a lifetime trying to scrub it away, but the stains would still show through.

“I’m sure you’re aware, that Han and I used to — that we were together?”

Fog pressed itself up against the apartment windows, leaving behind open mouthed kisses on the glass. “Yes.” Rey answered quietly. 

Leia’s eyes were glittery with unshed tears. The rest of her face was smoothly shuttered; you could only see the emotion in her eyes. “I’m sure you know about the child then too? About Ben?”

Rey remembered the silver-edged picture frame, and how even Luke had looked a little ragged when she’d asked who it was. “I didn’t realize he was your child.”

“He _was_ mine, once. But that was a long time ago. Before he chose a different path, one far away from curse work.” 

Leia’s tone was underlaid with thick currents of possession. The language of love was like that — possessive. _He was mine. Mine, and no one else’s_. This was one of the ways in which love tricked you. It made you feel like someone else was wholly yours, like you’d gained another entity, when all along, you really just lost yourself. 

Rey didn’t ask what happened. She only reached for Leia’s hand, and the mob princess took it; she actually grasped it like a lifeline, squeezing the blood from Rey’s fingertips. 

They stood together, two black figures silhouetted together against the swirling whiteness of the city: the most powerful woman in Manhattan, and the most dangerous.

\-------

Proposition two ends up dying, after all — to the sound of thunderous applause. The real Han Solo declines to give any press interviews.

\-------

After the vote, they close down the office early and Kylo walks with Rey to the subway station. He tells her that he’s also taking the 6 uptown, which is a blatant lie, but he can’t bear to let her go just yet. 

For the past few days, a silvery fog has drifted through the city, lying lightly atop the skyscrapers like an insidious mist, but now all that latent moisture in the air has finally turned to rain. It’s drizzling lightly outside. Neither of them have umbrellas. Rivulets of rain cling to Rey’s hair, like tiny, temporary diamonds gleaming under the haze of streetlights. 

Kylo thinks, not for the first time, how beautiful she is. He doesn’t believe in fate or kismet or destiny or love at first sight — but he does know that the first time he ever laid eyes on Rey Kenobi, something had shifted within him, like a chemical rearranging of his brain. It wasn’t just that he thought she was beautiful, because a million other girls were also beautiful.

Better than merely beautiful, she was interesting. There were those sloping cheekbones, the hazel eyes that weren’t really brown or green, but a mixture of the two. There was the tight little body that she tried to hide under a parade of shapeless shirts, but _god_ , sometimes he could spy the outline of her hips when she walked in front of the windows and the sunshine turned everything diaphanous. 

More than all of that though, she was _alive_. She was thrumming with latent energy, so restlessly alive and full of fire that she made him feel like he’d been asleep for years, and only now was he finally coming out of a deep slumber. It was a blaze of connection, of collision. It was like when you had been unhappy for a long time, and you didn’t recognize it until you were happy again. 

Ridiculous, because Kylo barely knew her. Ridiculous, because what he _did_ know of her terrified him. Those keloid scars for example. Everyone knew what they represented. But for him, realization was tempered by a white hot starburst of pain. Kylo had walked out of Leia’s apartment more than ten years ago, shunned her calls, shunned everything she’d stood for, blocked up his own powers. He’d even changed his name because he never wanted anyone to connect him to the Skywalkers or the Solos ever again. 

And now this girl waltzed into his life — a worker for a curse family — and he _still_ wanted her. God. Attraction was fucked up. You didn’t get to choose it. It just sort of … happened to you.

“Well. This is me.” Rey is blinking up at him, cocking her head down towards the rain-slicked subway steps. “Thanks for walking me. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Words dry up in Kylo’s throat. Limned against the white glow of street lighting, Rey’s lips are berry stung red, water droplets peppering her cheeks and shining in the waterfall of her hair, and he wants her so much he feels it everywhere — not just a physical ache in the biologically-obvious places of his body, but also as a tightening in his chest. It’s almost like he can’t breathe. There’s a word for this feeling, but Kylo’s not ready to address it at this particular moment. Instead, he only says, “You have dirt on your face.”

It’s another stupid lie, his second in only a few minutes, but Rey flushes and says, “Can you… ?”

She lifts her chin. Her warm breath hits his cheeks and Kylo is suddenly dizzy. He stutters, “Would you mind if I take off my gloves? They’re dirty too.”

Rey’s blush deepens but she allows it. It’s taboo, but she allows it.

Kylo’s hand starts to shake when he peels back his glove. He’s not hiding anything, now. He’s sure that his longing for her is written all over his face, clear as crystal, burning in him like a fever.

He reaches out for her. 

And he never does manage to touch her, bare-handed. That’s because he sees the flash of silver out of his peripheral vision. 

“Get down!” he hisses, screeching at Rey like a man possessed, just as the unknown man raises his gun and says, “I hope you rot in hell, you Skywalker whore.”

Rey has fast reflexes. At Kylo’s words, she’s already in motion, legs scissoring through the air, her body a blur of limbs. The bullet misses her by a hair, a whisper. 

And it’s a good thing Kylo already has his left hand ungloved. His pulse hammering in his ears, he does the thing he swore he would never do ever again. His bare fingers graze the man’s neck, brushing the swath of skin visible between his throat and coat collar.

This is what happens: the man crumples, something like two hundred pounds of muscle connecting with the pavement in a second, the gun clattering harmlessly away. This is what happens: in one second, the man was alive, and now he’s dead.

And Kylo is hunched over, the blowback rushing through him like a storm, the ring finger of his left hand, blackening down from the tip of the nail, the scream caught behind his teeth and Rey’s arms all around him, her breath sweet in his ear, whispering, _“Thank you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Holly Black's _Black Heart_ :
> 
> “Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot of whisky. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs. What no one told me, with all those warnings, is that even after you’ve fallen, even after you know how painful it is, you’d still get in line to do it again. A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes."


End file.
